


the fourth

by Michinokao



Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arlong Park Arc (One Piece), Body Image, Femininity, Gen, Nami-centric (One Piece), Physically Strong Nami, Strong Female Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:02:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25343635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Michinokao/pseuds/Michinokao
Summary: She’s thirteen, empty-eyed and hurting all over when her life tells her she isn't made to be like Nojiko or Bellmere. Nami picks up her staff and starts training. Her goal is to survive.
Relationships: Mugiwara Kaizoku | Strawhat Pirates & Nami, Nami & Arlong
Comments: 7
Kudos: 95





	the fourth

She becomes a member of Arlong’s crew when she’s a little kid, months after she saw him take her mother’s life right in front of her eyes. Nami is accepted maybe a bit too readily, in hindsight. It’s not only for her maps why Arlong wants her but also because she’s painfully human, a tiny girl amongst grown fishmen. A ragdoll he can beat up easily when he’s drunk and sees a light brown head of hair instead of orange - when the faces of two girls overlap until there’s only Koala left. The brat who was responsible for Fisher Tiger’s death.

Nami endures, mainly because she has no other choice. She is thrown, hit, slapped, burned and held under water until she nearly passes out. She is ten, eleven, twelve years old and all she can do is endure the pain. Somewhere in her heart, she thought Arlong would become less cruel with time. Maybe, she’d thought, he’d slowly accept her as a true crewmember of the Arlong Pirates. She draws maps for him, she goes on robbing missions for him - but, on top of it all, she bleeds for him. She bleeds... never stops bleeding and hurting for the killer of her mother.

And Arlong never treats her better. No, he’s becoming worse. The beatings are getting harsher the longer Nami’s a part of this scheme. She’s at 10 million beri, a tenth of what she needs to buy Cocoyashi. (Nami wonders if Arlong’s going to let her buy it. He’s a bastard. He’s the worst... so why should he bother keeping his word?) However, at this point, she doesn’t know if she survives long enough to even make it till 20 million. Her whole body is a mess of blue and black. Every time she wakes she’s barely able to heave herself up and when she does so too fast she runs the risk of vomiting all over her bedroom floor. She doesn’t want to worry the doctor – he’s a good man and she’s a... she’s a bad person. She doesn’t deserve his kindness anyways.

But she needs to do something – everything – to keep going. Everything to ensure she gets back her village. Everything to come out of this ordeal alive. She’ll never forget Bellmere’s sacrifice and dying without putting up a fight would be a dishonour to the woman who’d taken her in. Nami starts out slow. She buys a bo staff. In all honesty, she’d probably done so even without the constant threat of Arlong accidentally bashing her head in. Maybe she’d have trained a little bit, not too much to put on serious muscle mass because she always wanted to have a body like Nojiko’s or her mother’s – feminine, toned but not too athletic. She’s thirteen, empty-eyed and hurting all over... and she thinks: “I can’t be like them.” They’re not fighters (Bellmere hasn’t fought in a long time before Arlong’s arrival) but she is. Nami’s life tells her she isn’t made to be curvy and feminine. She isn’t made to wear dresses and skirts. Instead, she was made for battle. Her body’s not a temple, it’s a bastion. It has to be.

She neither parts from her V-cut t-shirts nor from her girlish haircut. Those are the two things she’s able to keep. Nami begins wearing leggings or boys’ shorts while swinging her staff in the silence of Cocoyashi’s nights. The night time is when she can refine her swings and build her muscles. Nami’s thirteen and fourteen.

Slowly, she puts on weight. The good kind of weight. The kind of weight that lets her absorb blows and anchors her feet to the ground. They’re clad in boots light enough to run in, but nothing fancy. No impractical heel that could make her stance weaver. She has abs and muscular upper arms. When she looks at herself in the mirror, she’s both proud and strangely sad for the person she’ll never be. In another universe, she’d have had a pinup girl’s frame. Now only the curves of her breasts and hips show that she’s a girl. Even her face has lost its cuteness. She’s raw, she’s stronger than she’d ever been; she can withstand Arlong’s drunken hits... And she starts wanting to strike back. She’s sixteen, seventeen and simultaneously collecting money for Arlong and training to kill him – to rob him of his existence just as he’d done with her mom. Nojiko’s looks towards her are indecipherable. Nami doesn’t know if she wants to know their meaning.

Nami’s seventeen when she hits back for the first time.

She loses. Badly.

There’s a large scar on her forearm. If she’d been a bit less muscular, she’d have come back with one arm less. Nami doesn’t stop trying, though.

At eighteen years old, she’s tried to kill her boss 66 times. None of those attempts have truly done any good. She starts to grow tired... tired of living like that. When she isn’t running towards Arlong with yet another new bo staff in her rough hands, she’s tricking pirates into accepting her as their crewmate. Then she betrays them for their money. She doesn’t feel remorse but the faces of those men are haunting her dreams. There’s blood on her hands. The deal between Arlong and her still stands and he luckily has always just laughed at her “fierceness” instead of punishing her for it. She nearly has the 100 million. (She’ll try it this way... although there’s a voice inside her head telling her not to be so damn naive.)

She comes across Luffy and Zoro and then Usopp and finally... Sanji.

“Wow! What a strong beauty you are, madam! A rose for you and I’ll of course give a discount to such a stunning lady as you!” Something in Nami breaks a tiny bit. Perhaps it’s her heart. She still remembers how she’d bitten her lip to stop herself from crying when she realized she’ll never look like Nojiko or Bellmere. She remembers a thirteen year old girl who’s sworn herself to become stronger to survive.

“Thank you.” she says and smiles brightly to cover her surprise. Sanji finds her attractive. It shouldn’t matter but it does. He’s... charming and even though she could never imagine herself loving him romantically, he’ll hold a special place in her heart nonetheless. (That’s why Sanji beating up Luffy on Whole Cake Island hurts her so much. Because they’re both so goddamn special to her. Luffy is the boy who saved her from Arlong but Sanji’s the one who saved her from the poor image of herself.)

She steals a ship.

Arlong betrays her. (Of course he does.)

Nami kneels on the ground. She has had enough. She grabs her knife and stabs her tattoo – over and over and over again. She curses his name. She... cries. She’s eighteen and she feels broken and bone tired.

A straw hat lands on her head. “Save me” she whispers.

“OF COURSE I WILL!” the only one she’ll ever willingly call captain answers.

Nami’s eighteen when Arlong Park falls to the hands of her friends. She’s eighteen and she’s strong but apparently not strong enough to... “Stop.” Zoro flicks her head. “Stop thinking you’re weak when you’re not.”

“But I couldn’t beat him.”

“Of course you couldn’t.” It hurts to hear that. Of course she couldn’t have... another flick to her head. She looks at Zoro. Zoro looks back. “You had no teacher who could have taught you how to fight, right? You had no-one, didn’t you? Why would you think you could go up against Arlong – who came from the Grandline – without someone teaching you how? Why would you think you could beat the other fishmen when you were having a mental breakdown? Of course you couldn’t. That’s why we did it instead. You’re nakama and you’re at least ten times stronger than Usopp” “Hey!” Usopp cries but is ignored, “but you don’t have a proper technique. That’s why I’m gonna teach you.” Zoro smirks.

“You’ll teach me?” Nami murmurs, absorbing the rest of the swordsman’s words. He’s... right. She never had a teacher. Of course she wouldn’t be able to beat Arlong that way. She swallows, nods. “I’d like that.” she says, voice sounding small.

“Good. I wouldn’t have accepted a no.”

Nami’s eighteen and she learns how to fight for real. She becomes a monster. She wants to be. Nami’s eighteen and she’s a navigator; she’s strong and muscular, she fights alongside Luffy, Zoro and Sanji. She wields a bo staff – one that soon contains the weather itself – and she’ll unlock armament haki. But she’s nineteen when she does and that’s another story altogether.

For now, Nami’s eighteen and she’s strong and... she’s happy.

**Author's Note:**

> i posted this on tumblr too but i was like "man, i like this too much not to post on ao3 as well" so here we are!  
> btw this is all of course from nami's perspective and her perception of femininity is of course heavily influenced by her mom and her sister
> 
> tumblr btw: droplet-dread-cat


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